This invention relates to devices for supporting cores particularly for use in mandrels for use in slitter/rewinding machines.
In slitter/rewinding machines a wide web is unwound from a feed roll of web material and passes through suitable slitter knives or slitter rollers in which the wide web is divided into a plurality of parallel narrow webs. Usually, alternate narrow webs are guided into rewind cores located in spaced apart relationship on one of two parallel rewind mandrels. In the differential centre winder system the mandrel is rotated to provide a power source for the rewind action and the cores are freely rotatable on the mandrel and connectable to it by slip clutch means which can comprise, for example, a disc keyed to the mandrel and rotating with it and a felt washer having one radial face in contact with the disc and another radial face in contact with a corresponding surface on the core or on a support member for the core. Spring means urge the various members towards each other to provide for the transmission of a torque. In this way each individual core has its own individual slip clutch drive from the mandrel.
Because of problems with the surface finish on the radial end surfaces of cores it has become the practice to use core supports which are manufactured to close engineering limits and transmit the torque from the mandrel and the slip clutch to the cores mounted on the supports.
Certain of these core supports suffer from the disadvantage that in order to remove the loaded cores from the mandrel it is necessary to remove all the clutch and core support parts from the mandrel during the removal operation to remove the loaded cores. This often entails the removal of the entire mandrel from the slitter/rewinding machine.
Core supports have been made which are designed to overcome the above mentioned disadvantage but such core supports are complicated and either may make it difficult to pass loaded cores over the core supports and clutch parts for removal from one end of the mandrel or may include spring loaded elements which can impare locking of a core onto the core support. One prior art device is shown in U.K. Pat. No. 1416320.